Music

New Music To Know: Kopecky Family Band Go Full Wes Anderson On Debut

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There’s an oft-quoted and hotly debated line in the movie High Fidelty, when the main character (played by John Cusack) says, “I agreed that what really matters is what you like, not what you are like… Books, records, films – these things matter.”

Some consider the sentiment to be trivial, but there’s something in the idea of wearing your inspirations on your sleeve to let people know what you like. It’s what the Kopecky Family Band did when they made their self-directed video for “Heartbeat.”

“Heartbeat” is one of those songs that is one perfect ad-sync away from turning them into an earworm success band, like the Lumineers or Imagine Dragons (the New York Times suggests you check them out if you like Fleetwood Mac). You know the type, the band who you kind of heard of and then six months later you can’t escape because it turns out that one song was just so damn catchy. The track marries lyrics about experiencing a creepy crush with a dark guitar chord and handclaps. So for the video, they naturally went the way of one of their personal inspirations: Wes Anderson.

“We love those movies,” singer and bassist Gabe Simon told Radio.com. “They embrace a lot of ideas and things we talk about. And visually we’ve taken a lot from what he does and tried to put it into what we do when we create art.”

And it’s true. Anderson’s effect on the Nashville band is obvious in more than just this single video, it’s in the greater concept of the way they create music on their debut album, titled Kids Raising Kids, pulling in bits and pieces of the director’s trademark soundtrack-style. Sonically they seem to share his affinity for the Rolling Stones during their ’60s ABKO-era. While their lyrical sense of humor is more like the Kinks, a staple in Anderson’s movies like 1999’s Rushmore and 2007’s The Darjeeling Limited. And thematically, with both Anderson and Kopecky, there is always hope — or in the case of the latter, “Hope” — which, in the worlds of both, can be a bittersweet thing.

Singer Kelsey Kopecky makes their life on the road sound like an Anderson-esque troupe of characters.